


Fighting Rituals of the Gotham-Dwelling Robins

by anthologia



Series: Ornithological Notes on the Gotham-Dwelling Robins [2]
Category: Batman (Comics), DCU (Comics), Nightwing (Comics), Red Robin (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Injury, Intervention, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Multi, OT3, Poisoning, Robincest, Self-Destructive Behavior
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-05
Updated: 2015-05-05
Packaged: 2018-03-29 03:14:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3880129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anthologia/pseuds/anthologia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jason and Dick confront Tim about her tendency to jump into fights she might not walk away from alone. Tim wishes they'd just let her fight the assassins coming after her in peace.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fighting Rituals of the Gotham-Dwelling Robins

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place in the same universe as Mating Habits of the Gotham-Dwelling Robins. Basically exists because Tim-as-Red-Robin picked up the concerning habit of constructing win scenarios that didn't necessarily include surviving. Jason and Dick are not okay with this.

She’s in the middle of a fight with a handful of assassins trying to pass as common street thugs, a gift from Ra’s. Tim spotted them a couple nights ago and has been carefully laying plans to draw them out and have them dealt with all at once.

The fight is a strain, but something she can handle as long as she’s 100% in it and doesn’t let herself get distracted. Even when one of them manages to nick her with what she has to assume is a poisoned blade, she estimates that if it doesn’t kill her within the next minute, she’ll probably only have to worry about it slowing her down. She can still win this, if she ends it quick.

Tim takes a breath and prepares herself to go into a set of much more brutal moves than she usually employs when Red Hood drops right the fuck out of nowhere to stand in front of her. “Sorry to interrupt, but the bird and I got business,” he says, like he has any _right_ to step into the middle of her fight. Two of them get bullets in the leg before anyone’s quite adjusted to the presence of a new combatant, and then he’s got an arm around her waist to pull her with him while he ascends on a zipline.

Beneath them, Jason drops enough concussive grenades, flashbangs, and canisters of knock-out gas to fell a herd of elephants. Tim estimates a _couple_ assassins might have been caught by them.

Once they touch down on a roof, Tim twists out of his grip and spins around to stare at him angrily. “What the hell are you _doing_ , Hood?” He’s just wasted her opportunity to get rid of the assassins after her all at once before they can do any damage to the city.

“What the fuck did you think _you_ were doing, _Red Robin_?” he snaps back and grabs her wrist like he expects her to run on him. Not that she was planning on it; she’s too pissed off to _not_ have it out with him now.

“My _job_ , which you just completely screwed up! It’s going to take me forever to track them all down now!”

Nightwing, newly alighted on the roof, executes a neat roll and comes to a stop between them, not-so-subtly separating the two of them. He carefully detaches Jason’s grip on her arm, replacing it with a gentler hand. “Hood. Red Robin. Maybe we should take an hour or two to cool off before having this conversation.”

“Oh, _you_ finally got your invitation to the party,” Jason says darkly. “If you weren’t late, you’d be yelling with me.”

She’s pretty sure Dick just rolled his eyes behind his mask. “It’s not going to do anyone any good to yell about this on a roof.”

“Look, I need to go run damage control before – “ Tim abruptly stumbles forward as a wave of vertigo hits her. _Oh_. The knife wound. She’d almost forgotten about it.

“ – Red?” Dick hauls her up before she can collapse and tucks her against his chest. “Shit, she’s bleeding. Hood, where’s your nearest safe house with medical supplies?”

“About seven minutes away from here.” Someone’s hand presses against her forehead.

“Okay. Take us there now.” Nightwing takes a minute to arrange his hold on her so she won’t fall before taking off in the same direction as Red Hood. The first lurch of the line he uses forces her to empty out the contents of her stomach, after which she blissfully passes out.

\--

Tim wakes up in a bed, someone plastered against her back with his arm draped over her waist. Dick. She’d like to say it’s some sort of extra sense for the people she’s involved with that tells her for sure, but really it’s just process of elimination. Jason’s glaring at her from a chair next to the bed when she opens her eyes.

“You’re an idiot” is the first thing he says.

Dick stirs behind her sleepily. “Jason.”

“Sorry, we’re supposed to be using “I feel” sentences, right?” Jason’s attention goes back to her after having flicked away for barely a second. “When you pull shit like that, _I feel_ like you’re an idiot.”

“ _Jason_ ,” Dick says again, and she can tell it’s supposed to be a warning but instead it sounds a little like he’s trying not to laugh. He pulls away from her long enough to tug her onto her back so he can look at her face. “How’re you feeling, Tim?”

“I’m okay,” Tim says automatically. She feels achy and kind of feverish, honestly, but it could be worse. “What’s going on?”

“Funny thing.” Jason drawls out the words like he’s enjoying them. “I was getting bored, cause it was a slow night in my part of town, so I figured I’d visit my girlfriend and see if she had anything going on. I show up, and she’s fighting about five assassins on her own and apparently doesn’t think that’s important enough to call for back-up.”

“I had it under control,” Tim says.

Jason’s eye twitches. “Then, when she passes out barely two minutes after I pulled her out of there, I find out she was fighting on a poisoned knife wound. So.” He spreads his hands. “I don’t know what’s going on, Babybird, you’re gonna have to tell me. Does all that shit about working together not actually mean anything, or does it only apply to me because I’m the _bad_ Robin?”

“Needlessly confrontational, Jay, we talked about this,” Dick says without looking up from her. “Tim. We don’t want you to feel ganged up on, but we have been worried about this.”

Tim stares up at him, feeling lost. “About what?”

“You’re still working like Red Robin’s just a solo act. And that’s okay most of the time – we know you can handle yourself and we’ve got our own problem areas to deal with.”

Jason mutters something uncomplimentary about the section of Gotham he’s marked out as his own territory.

“But _you’re_ not a solo act anymore, and you need to let us help you when you come up against stuff like last night.”

“I had it under control,” Tim repeats.

“Except you _didn’t_ , cause if you _did_ have it under control then you wouldn’t be in bed right now. Well,” Jason adds with a little smirk because: _Jason_ , “at least not for the same reasons.”

Tim struggles to sit up, refusing Dick’s silent offer of help on principle. “I _did_ have it under control. I knew they were going to be there, I had an idea of who they were and what kind of tactics they favored. Some things happened that I didn’t expect, but if you’d left me alone I still would’ve handled the situation.”

“Are you even _listening_ to yourself right now? Jesus Christ, that doesn’t make it _better_. Are you seriously going to lie there in that bed and tell me you _planned_ to take on members of the League by yourself?”

Tim’s starting to feel like maybe she lost control of this conversation at some point. If she ever had control, which is doubtful. It’s a struggle to try to think through the possible effects of what she could say, her thoughts sliding through her head like so much water. “I’ve done it before.”

“Tim. Jason.” Dick squeezes her hand gently and turns pleading eyes on Jason. “I think maybe we need another time-out.”

Jason growls in frustration. “You can’t just put us in corners whenever we get emotional, Dick. And I think I’m pretty fucking justified in being pissed off right now!”

“I agree, but yelling at her when she’s still poisoned isn’t going to help much. Besides, I think her fever just spiked.”

Tim’s not quite sure if Dick’s exaggerating her condition to get Jason to cool off some more or if he really thinks she’s that bad off, but either way, she appreciates the reprieve. She just feels really tired and shivery right now, and she’d like to go back to sleep.

“Goddamnit. _Fine_.” Jason strips off his undershirt and climbs onto the bed with them, sandwiching her in the middle between himself and Dick. She might object if the two of them weren’t so warm. Jason’s hand starts lazily rubbing down her sides and easing the ache there while Dick wraps her in a hug.

“Don’t think our conversation is over,” Jason murmurs against her ear. “But it’ll wait.”

She sighs and snuggles her head into Dick’s arm.

__

She thinks she might have woken up a few times after that, but it’s hard to tell. The memories take on a hazy, confused quality that makes it hard to sort fever dream from reality. Jason’s wrapped around her the next time she’s conscious enough to take stock of anything outside the scope of her own body. He’s snoring a little, which makes her kind of want to giggle for some reason she couldn’t explain to herself if she tried.

“Morning, Pretty Bird.” Dick sits down on the bed and runs a hand over her forehead. “Looks like your fever broke. How’re you feeling?”

Tired. Thirsty. There’s still a bone-deep ache settled into her body, though it’s not as bad as it was before. “Better.”

“That’s good.” Dick lowers himself until he’s lying on his side, watching her. “You scared the shit out of us, you know.”

Tim blinks at him, feeling slow. “I’m okay.”

“You’re not, though.” He shakes his head in advance of her objection. “Not just cause you got poisoned, although that was bad enough and we’re seriously going to have an extended conversation about it. But before that. And I think it’s at least a little bit my fault.”

She lets out a breath. “No.”

“I made you feel like you were alone.” He keeps going like she didn’t say anything. “I screwed up, giving Damian Robin without even talking to you first. I still think it was the best decision for him, but I should have made it clearer that I wasn’t picking him over you, that I still wanted you by my side. I could have offered you Nightwing or helped you design a new identity or basically anything but what I did.” He takes a deep breath. “And I should’ve listened to your reasons when you said you thought B was still alive, instead of jumping directly to therapy.”

Tim stays quiet – it feels like anything she could say right now would break this fragile moment into pieces or expose it for a lie. Dick smiles at her sadly like he can read her thoughts.

“But you’re not alone anymore. Okay? You have me and Jason, and Bruce and Babs and Stephanie and the Titans and even Damian if I have anything to say about it. You don’t _have_ to take this stuff on by yourself anymore. All you have to do is talk to us.”

“Damn right,” Jason mumbles against her neck, his voice gravelly in a way that would have made her feel pleasantly warm if she was feeling better. She tries to sit up a little, but he just tightens his arm around her and draws her back against him.

Tim stares at Dick helplessly. He sighs and shifts closer to her, kisses her forehead. “You don’t have to believe me right away, okay? Just talk to at least me or Jason next time. We can help.”

“Even if I’m still pissed at you,” Jason adds from his spot behind her, his chin digging into her shoulder. She doesn’t really mind.

She takes a breath. “Okay.”

“Okay?” Dick’s face lightens, a hopeful smile blooming over his lips.

“She fucking _said_ okay, Dick, now shut up,” Jason grumbles. “Some of us want to go back to sleep.”

Tim just tugs Dick onto his back so she can nestle her head in the crook of his arm. Going back to sleep sounds like a good idea.

She feels the faintest brush of lips against her cheek.

**Author's Note:**

> If you are interested in my fics and want more, I have an account at syntactition.tumblr.com where I have bits of stories that are currently in the works and other ficlets and stories that haven't made their way to AO3.


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